It’s an entirely new standard, so no, it won’t just be a firmware patch.

Removing the notifications permission doesn’t prevent them from being sent. Source

Not sure how it hasn’t been said yet, but I really like Helium314’s OpenBoard fork. Can’t recommend enough.

This list is a must.

They’re mods of the proprietary Discord client, so yeah they don’t meet the criteria. But the mods themselves are open source which is nice.

Didn’t realize they had one, appears a lot of functionality requires an account to use. I’d be cautious overall based on the privacy practices they use in their mobile app, doesn’t seem to be a big concern for them and I’d be careful giving them any trust. But if you do wish to use them, their mobile site with a good content blocker would definitely be the best option (preferably without an account if possible).

I like the concept of Ground News, but about the privacy…

According to Exodus, their mobile app contains 9 trackers:

• Amplitude
• AppsFlyer
• Facebook Analytics
• Facebook Login
• Facebook Share
• Google Analytics
• Google Crashlytics
• Google Firebase Analytics
• Google Tag Manager

Also wants location, camera, phone state, and advertising ID access?!

No thanks.

Hard for me to understand how blocking valid email providers like Proton, Tutanota, and Skiff, would actually mitigate any abuse. All it’s going to do is hurt the websites with this filter and prevent privacy-minded folks from signing up. Unfortunate to see, hopefully they get some common sense and don’t block these for no reason.

If you don’t have it on your Sony TV, I’d recommend installing another launcher like FLauncher which effectively does the same thing and gets rid of the garbage.

You can easily change launchers on the Shield, unlike the Fire TV for instance, which actively blocks it, to get rid of the advertising and garbage.

You can easily change launchers on the NVIDIA Shield and Chromecasts. Fire TV’s are really the only devices that actively prevent changing launchers and try to force you to deal with their advertising.

Personally my recommendation is generally the Shield, or maybe an Apple TV depending on your use case. Expensive but well worth it imo, you really do get what you pay for.

If you need cheaper, then I’d probably go the Chromecast. Lesser of the two evils between like the Fire TV imo.

Last good version of Windows, RIP 🙏

They said Chrome specifically, not Chromium as a whole.

different distros

Isn’t that a benefit of Linux, having all kinds of different distros and different options available? There isn’t a “one size fits all”. Just find the one you like and go from there.

broken repositories

How often does this actually happen? I can’t think of a time I encountered broken repositories within the last few years of using Linux as a daily driver, I feel like you’re exaggerating this. I think the repository system in general is amazing and installing software on Linux is so much better than Windows in about every way really.

software that doesn’t work on Linux

This is a fair point, it depends on your use case. If anything you need is only tied to Windows, then yeah you don’t have many options unfortunately. But I think for average people its probably fine since basically everything is on Linux nowadays, I guess biggest exceptions are like Microsoft Office and Adobe’s suite.

proprietary drivers

I assume you mean NVIDIA? You can just get a distro that includes them already installed and ready to go like Nobara, or just use one that makes them easier to set-up like Pop OS, if you’re uncomfortable installing them on a regular distro. (Though it really isn’t that difficult).

Overall Linux isn’t for everyone, but I do think it’s improving more and more and about at a point now where average users could probably get away with using it instead of Windows in a lot of cases. But it does depend on your use case for sure at the end of the day. Hopefully I’m not out of touch here though lol.

You don’t even need to do that, all you have to do is hold shift when you right click, and it circumvents any hijacking.

I prefer Calyx on my phone, for the sake of the extra privacy of Micro-G vs sandboxed Google Play Services.

You should give DivestOS a try tbh if you prefer microG to Sandboxed Play Services, since Divest’s implementation of microG is sandboxed/unprivileged unlike Calyx’s, which is a massive privacy and security benefit. Divest in general is a lot more private and secure then stock or Calyx, since it includes a lot of hardening and patches from Graphene, so I’d recommend it as the second best option to Graphene in general, and definitely by far the best option for using microG. Divest also covers most of the same phones Calyx and Graphene do, unfortunately no Pixel Tablet support though.

(I’m not trying to shill Divest or anything btw lol, I just think its a great underrated project that deserves a lot more recognition and support than it has, and seems to fit your use case)

Yeah, its just stupid on all angles. Nearly all security benefits of using iMessage over something like SMS go out the window entirely when using middleware like this. The only thing you gain is the color of your bubble and maybe some extra features. Overall its useless. If someone seriously thinks lower of a person or their social status of whatever because of the COLOR OF THEIR MESSAGE… that person has issues and I could care less about what they think of me, some self reflection could be nice.

The problem with graphene is that is shamelessly promotes proprietary software.

How does GrapheneOS “shamelessly promote” proprietary software? I don’t think I’ve ever seen them do this. Maybe you’re referring to Sandboxed Play Services? But that isn’t “shamelessly promoted” or recommended, it isn’t even included in the OS, its just an optional app that can be installed for those who need it.

They have build tools to try to make it safe to run non-free programs (proprietary software) but that entirely misses the point.

I assume you mean Sandboxed Play Services again? That’s far from the only feature or benefit that GrapheneOS gives. They do much more work than just Sandboxed Play Services or making it safe to run “non-free” programs. They make it safe to run ANY program, regardless of license.

Activating Reader Mode on Firefox appears to bypass it, lol.

Not all of it is carrier related. I had an S21 unlocked (from US) and it still included Facebook and their garbage services, Netflix, OneDrive, etc. Also all of Samsung’s first party bloatware and nonsense is prevalent regardless. Not to mention Samsung selling data and their tracking, crippling your phone if you root it or install a custom OS (and in the US outright preventing it entirely), etc. Can’t recommend them or their phones at all, but its unfortunate because they have great hardware, just terrible software.